Hope Kirby Patton of Gainesville, Georgia, passed away peacefully on April 26, 2025, at the age of 95.

Celebration of life will be held at 11:00 am, Saturday, May 3, 2025 at Lanier Village Estates Chapel with inurnment to be at Gainesville First United Methodist Church Columbarium.

Born Lucretia Hope Kirby on May 20, 1930, in Columbiana, Alabama, Hope Patton grew up in Lanett, Alabama where her father was Superintendent of Schools. The summer before her senior year of high school, the family moved to Opelika, Alabama, where she completed her secondary education at Opelika High School.

She entered Birmingham-Southern College in the fall of 1947, where she excelled academically, achieving membership in the honor societies Alpha Lambda Delta, Mortar Board, and Phi Beta Kappa. She was also active in the women’s fraternity, Pi Beta Phi. In 1951, she was graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in history and was named valedictorian of her graduating class.

Following graduation, she taught elementary school in Birmingham. In 1953, she married her college sweetheart, G. Thomas Patton, a 1949 graduate of Birmingham-Southern. Tom’s career soon took them away from Alabama, first to the New York area, where they raised their two sons, and later to Detroit. Prior to the move to New York, she retired from full-time teaching to devote her energies to her family and to a variety of volunteer jobs, working with after-school tutoring programs, the Pascack Valley Hospital Auxiliary, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Guild, and Boys and Girls Club, among other organizations. A devoted churchwoman all her life, she was an ordained elder and deacon in the Presbyterian Church, USA, and served as a docent at Kirk in the Hills, a Presbyterian church in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Following Tom’s retirement in 1989, she moved with him to the Georgia mountain community of Big Canoe, where she again found ways to get involved in her community, staying active in the community’s interdenominational chapel and serving on the chapel’s Board of Trustees. She also served on the board of the Big Canoe Property Owners Association. In 2005, after sixteen years at Big Canoe, Hope and Tom moved to Lanier Village Estates, a retirement/continuing care community in Gainesville, Georgia.

In addition to Tom, her beloved husband of 71 years, she is survived by two sons and two daughters-in-law: Thomas and Vickie Patton of Cumming, Georgia, and Neal and Sally Patton of Atlanta, Georgia. She is also survived by grandchildren Kimberly Patton and her wife Rachel Patton of Atlanta, Katherine Patton of Lawrenceville, Georgia, and John Patton of Columbus, Georgia. She was preceded in death by her three siblings: Lee Kirby Phillips (2000), Louise Kirby Wall (2001) and Taylor Kirby, Jr. (2006).

Memorial Park Riverside Chapel, 989 Riverside Drive, Gainesville, GA 30501. 770-297-6200.

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